


The Second Hand Unwinds

by lady_ragnell



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, Sewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 14:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16348286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Grantaire is intrigued by the newest time traveler at the organization he works at, and even more intrigued and worried when he discovers that his goal is to change the past.





	The Second Hand Unwinds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myrmidryad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/gifts).



> **Warnings:** potential character death due to Time Shenanigans, injury and illness, none of it particularly dwelled on.
> 
> Written for **myrmidryad** for a fic-for-donations post! The request was just for E/R pining and eventual feelings, and this happened. It is, I am afraid, the short version of something that could easily have been four times as long, but I beg your indulgence and hope that you like it anyway! Maybe someday I'll be able to return and write the remix.
> 
> Time travel worldbuilding owes a debt to Connie Willis's Oxford Time Travel series, and a little bit to The Rise and Fall of DODO, and of course to various other sources as well.
> 
> The title is from Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" and I'm not (very) sorry.

“Courfeyrac said I should come speak to you.”

Grantaire looks up from the hem he's pinning for Cosette and blinks at the apparition in the doorway. He knew they were getting a new historian, but he didn't know he was coming so soon, or that he's the kind of gorgeous that makes Grantaire wonder wild things about Michelangelo and causality. He is very lucky that his mouth is full of pins so he can't actually blurt any of that out, and he gestures to explain that as well as he can.

“I'm Enjolras. They want me on my first trip within a month.”

Which is why Courfeyrac sent him, like the ruthless man he is. He knows how backed up Grantaire's workshop is, and what a sucker he is for a pretty face. Grantaire puts another pin in and then goes through the ungraceful process of getting the rest in his hand so he can actually hold a conversation. “The hell they do,” he says, which is maybe not the best first impression. “I have two dresses that require new corsetry for trips within the next two weeks, a very specific suit I'm having to reconstruct the style of from a painting just after that, and an unfinished gambeson that should have been done a week ago only the dyeing process for the fabric was ruined and I had to start over. You can wait.”

Enjolras frowns. Even that is charming and turns him less into marble sculpture and more into a disapproving, golden-haloed saint from a painting. If he specializes in the medieval era, he's going to cause a riot. “It's nothing fancy, or even particularly highly tailored, but the trip where they want to send me won't be in a good temporal position again for most of a year, and it's right in the middle of my specialty. Courfeyrac said you might even be able to make some alterations to things that are already in your workshop.”

“When and where are you going, then?” Grantaire places another pin, because it's safer to look at the hem than it is to look at the gorgeous man in his workshop doorway.

“France, 1790s.”

Grantaire has to look back at him so he can express the full depths of his horror at that. “You can tell Courfeyrac that I will quit before I am forced to make an ensemble for the last lush days of Versailles in less than a month.”

Enjolras looks at him in distaste, like maybe he stepped in something unpleasant or discovered that history, on the whole, smells like shit in both the literal and metaphorical senses as a general rule. “I'm not going to Versailles. Paris, for the revolution—and among the revolutionaries, I should say. Not court costume.”

Grantaire raises his eyebrows. “You know, we discourage historians from going to places where they're going to die horribly on barricades, as a general rule.”

“I've picked a date low on violent incidents,” Enjolras says, sounding grudging about it, like maybe he wanted to go off to be a noble martyr and got talked down by Combeferre or Courfeyrac. “And it's a short trip. I need a citation for a paper on strategy in revolutionary groups in that era.”

“It's your funeral.” He eyes Enjolras and tries to make sure it looks like a professional assessment. It is, but also Enjolras is a gorgeous person in a workplace full of gorgeous people, Grantaire has to be given some leeway to recover from his appearance. “There are a few pieces I can fit. Let me get some measurements from you, and some references together. I'll need some more specifics from you, and you aren't getting anything today, but I'll see what I can do.”

Enjolras lets him take measurements with the expression of a long-suffering cat allowing itself to be petted and promises citations and explanations by e-mail within an afternoon.

Grantaire goes back to Cosette's dress and tries to shake off the sensation of having just been through a celestial visitation.

*

“So, the new guy,” he says to Jehan in the break room that night, feeling triumphant and also like he wouldn't mind laying down with a cool cloth on his eyes for about a fortnight. Cosette's hem is pinned and half sewn, and Feuilly's gambeson is in pretty good shape, now that he has the color right. He hasn't pulled clothing for Enjolras yet, but that can wait for the morning, despite Enjolras's immaculate citations.

“Courfeyrac and Combeferre knew him at school, and he did a trip or two with Lamarque as part of his thesis,” says Jehan, which explains more than it doesn't. Lamarque at the university was one of the first and strongest voices in travel to the past for academic and otherwise educational purposes, and their semi-independent firm is staffed mostly by his former students. There's a certain idealistic, revolutionary type, and Enjolras fits it so well that he may as well have sprung from Lamarque's forehead.

“No one warned me that Bernini would weep to sculpt him.”

Jehan's look of gentle exasperation should make him squirm, but Grantaire lives a life past shame, which is why he has both a glass of wine and a glass of energy drink and is switching off taking drinks from them. At least he still has enough dignity that he hasn't poured one into the other. “I don't think anyone thought it was important.”

“I'm your fashion consultant, so I'm allowed to be shallow.” Grantaire considers. “Or it's important to know what the people I'm dressing look like and how they'll impact the people around them because of how important physical beauty has been throughout history. That's more professional, right?”

There's a snort from the doorway, and not an amused one. Grantaire winces. At least, from Jehan's horrified look, that wasn't a deliberate set-up. Some of their other friends and co-workers might have done it as a joke, but if Jehan had noticed Enjolras in the doorway, he would have stopped Grantaire before he said something incriminating.

Enjolras still looks like someone told a tasteless joke. Grantaire, who usually opens his mouth and hopes the right words fall into place in awkward situations, finds himself speechless, which is alarming. “Have you had a chance to look over your wardrobe for me?” Enjolras asks, and it's impressively frosty.

He's also being kind of a dick, which is nice. If he were perfect Grantaire would have to make a vow never to speak to him again. If he's mostly perfect but also a dick, the playing field seems more level. “No, because I had a whole lot of outstanding projects, like I told you when you showed up earlier,” he says, and even sounds like he maybe wasn't just waxing poetic about Enjolras's looks. “But if you want things fast, we're going to have to rent from the opera again, or one of the movie studios, and accuracy is not their strong suit.”

Even more disdain. Enjolras would make a hell of a fake aristocrat, but Grantaire sort of suspects he would get punched if he dared say so. “I'm not quite in that much of a hurry. But do let me know when you have everything.”

“You're on my list before my coffee kicks in tomorrow morning,” Grantaire promises, and it was even already his intention. “Too much morning sewing leads to ripping stitches later, so pulling from the racks will be about my speed.” He stands and stretches, and Enjolras makes very distrustful eye contact with him the whole time. “For now, though, I want to get one more seam done tonight, so I'll leave you guys to it.”

Enjolras just nods with a fractional lessening of disdain, and Jehan frowns at him, worried, maybe remembering Grantaire's track record with gorgeous people he can't talk sensibly to. It's not great. “Have a good night, R,” is all he says, though.

Grantaire really does not deserve his friends.

*

Enjolras, of course, fits right in with the rest of the group at the agency, as they go in and out on their scheduled trips. He talks seriously with Combeferre and Courfeyrac about primary sources, revolution, and learning from the past. He gets in academic debates with Feuilly about the sometimes arbitrary rules of time travel, and about the even more arbitrary rules the government tries to force on them. He learns quickly about everybody's specialty areas and, fuck him, offers useful advice without sounding like he's bossing them or pretending like he knows better.

His conversations with Grantaire remain awkward at best. “I think you have very different theoretical takes on things,” Cosette says in her most comforting manner after listening in on one of their fittings, which have evolved into Enjolras standing around with all the warmth and flexibility of a lingerie mannequin while Grantaire needles more with his words than with the tools of his trade to see if he can get a response before Enjolras eventually retires to a changing screen.

“Perhaps that's because I don't have a theoretical take on anything, being a mere tailor,” he says, sweeping her a deep bow before taking out the patterns for the sleeve adjustment that is thankfully all one of her older dresses needs for her next trip.

“You have plenty of theoretical opinions about wardrobes, which is what you were hired for,” she points out, but she's still frowning at him. Enjolras is still behind one of his screens, rustling busily away as he puts his regular clothes back on. “And on other things, too. Do you think the past should be changed?”

Grantaire makes a point of shuddering. “What if things turned out worse?”

“Well, that's a theoretical take. If a very pessimistic one.” Cosette kisses him on the cheek. “Now, what's range of motion going to be like with these new sleeves?”

“Still shitty, because the patriarchy didn't want you to be able to move,” he says, relieved, and goes about his business, which is much easier with people he isn't so attracted to that he wants to scream.

A few minutes later, Enjolras appears from behind his screen. He watches Cosette's fitting for a few minutes, looking puzzled, before he catches Grantaire looking and gives him a sharp nod before he ducks out the door.

*

Enjolras goes on one trip, and another and another. He seems to specialize in short trips, three days at most, scattered mostly in the same five years or so, right around the Revolution.

“It fascinates me,” he admits in an unguarded moment during his second fitting, when he needs to dress for a more rural area and Grantaire has to pick his brain about what he's wearing, since resources about the rural lower class are even more rare than about the urban lower class. “There were people who did monstrous things, the famous names, the leaders, but mostly there were students and farmers and tradesmen and they were working together because they hit a limit. It's amazing, how it all happened even without modern methods of communication.”

“And you? Would you have been one of the leaders, even if it meant doing monstrous things?”

Enjolras seems to take the question seriously, to Grantaire's surprise. Maybe he realized that Grantaire meant it honestly. He spends a lot of time, in his workshop, wondering if he'd have been a tailor or something else completely throughout history, since he became a tailor by complete chance. “I think I'd do a lot if my friends were starving,” he finally says. “Though perhaps not the guillotine.”

Of course he wouldn't. Execution isn't Enjolras's style, even if he might have considered it a distasteful necessity. Grantaire knows him well enough by now to know that he would want to be in the thick of action, a strategist. A general. If he believed in serving kings, he would have been a hell of a knight, Scherrer's Joan of Arc or an Arthurian one full of pre-Raphaelite romance, chivalry untouched by reality. “I'd like to think I would have revolted,” he says, shaking off the thought, and sees how it surprises Enjolras. “But it's so hard—and if you fail, what then? Like as not, you're dead or in jail, and then you can't help anyone.”

“If you don't try, then everyone fails, including the people trying to protect you.”

The next day he's off on his trip, three days, and comes back with a black eye and his clothes full of rips. Grantaire knows he gets scolded by Courfeyrac and Combeferre, and probably makes a report to them about any citations he found for his current work, but nobody else gets much of an explanation at all.

Grantaire thinks about their conversation, and about the people who don't come back sometimes, from the past, presumed dead but maybe just run away, willing to forgo modern conveniences for a part of history they care about more than the present.

Enjolras comes back when his bruises have started to heal, takes Grantaire's ribbing about ruining the clothes he worked so hard on, and talks about what he needs to outfit him for a longer trip.

*

Joly and Bossuet look unusually serious when they come in for fittings for their next trip. They're going partly for fun and partly to get citations for a paper on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, so they're off to the first half of the twentieth century for a luxurious six weeks or so to insert themselves into the right social circle (and they are very lucky that one of their partner agencies in Canada has a permanent base in the era and can equip them with more than can be sent through the door with them, including introductions to some people who might know some people.

“Something wrong? You two are going to have a great time and make best friends with all the literary set at the salons, I promise. Bossuet, have you been practicing your poems?”

Bossuet groans. “They should have sent Jehan if they wanted a poet. No, I'm a novelist. A bad one.”

“They should be sending _you_ ,” says Joly. “A painter is always a good idea.”

Grantaire shrugs. “I'm out of practice. Now, is there anything going on besides imposter syndrome?”

“They announced during traveler meeting this morning,” says Joly, and bites his lip like he's thinking about what he wants to say next. “Enjolras's next trip has a deadline. He's supposed to be staying a month, and about a week after the month is up, he'll be there on a thesis trip with Lamarque. It's tight, but he needs to be there that whole time.”

Grantaire's eyebrows shoot up. “If it's that tight, they should be sending someone else.”

Bossuet jumps in, mouth pulling down, because Joly is looking at the floor instead of Grantaire. “It's people he already has personal connections to, and they're secretive enough that a letter of introduction might not work. Courfeyrac and Combeferre are pretty obviously mad at him for not being clearer about how close he's been dancing around deadlines in the era. He's done way too many trips there, the time he can be there looks like Swiss cheese at this point. New era enforced after this trip, but they're letting him take it, it's the culmination of his whole project.”

Academic agencies avoid deadlines, mostly because academia really doesn't approve of anyone ending up _dead_. Nobody should die for peer-review. “How happy is he about getting told off about it?”

Joly shrugs. “Unhappy, but also unrepentant.”

That checks out. Grantaire doesn't know Enjolras very well, but he's willing to bet that's one of his default states. “Well, I guess I'll have to give him something good to die in, just in case. After, of course, I've set you up to look like the most fashionable men in Paris in the 1920s.”

Neither of them looks pleased, but nobody is ever pleased when anybody's got a deadline, especially one on the tail end of a long trip. But Bossuet scraped a deadline by twelve hours after getting thrown in jail once, and Bahorel took his first trip when the science was still newer and dates less precise and didn't know he would have been dead on a later one until the numbers started coming up strangely. They always pull through.

*

“The air around here these days is distinctly funereal, and I blame you,” Grantaire says the next time Enjolras comes in for a fitting.

“I know exactly how much time I have, and have three plans for where and how I can end the work early if I start being worried about the deadline looming.” Enjolras lifts one shoulder into a shrug, taking a pile of clothes when Grantaire shoves them into his arms. “Combeferre and Courfeyrac insisted.”

Enjolras may look like a marble statue, but he's made of lava. There's no way in hell he's going to leave before the deadline, and if anyone believes he'll actually take advantage of one of those plans, they're fooling themselves. “Go try those on. Also, don't lie to your bosses, you're going to do something reckless and they may as well be able to prepare themselves for it.”

That earns him a scowl, and Enjolras goes behind one of the changing screens to try a few things on. He's going to be running in slightly better circles this time, so Grantaire has to make sure his doeskin pants fit him as well as they should. It's going to be a trial, but he'll survive somehow. “Sometimes things need doing even if they're reckless,” Enjolras says after a few seconds, muffled by cloth.

There's a certain kind of time traveler who should never be allowed to do it but who no one can ever resist sending, and Grantaire is beginning to suspect that Enjolras is one of them. The question is whether he should mention it—and if so, if he should mention it to Enjolras or to someone who might actually keep him from doing something stupid.

Enjolras is probably going to do the stupid thing either way, somehow. “So what are you going to change?” Grantaire asks, because he may as well be blunt.

“I don't know what you're talking about.” That's less a lie and more a freezing refusal to discuss the subject. “I don't know about these colors, the clothes don't look worn enough.”

“I want to make sure they fit before I distress them, otherwise wear along the seams might look wrong, you know this. Let me guess, you're planning something dramatic and noble—saving a life or taking one. Is there precedent for prosecuting someone for a murder they did several hundred years ago? It seems kind of past the statute of limitations. Not for you, but for the sake of familial justice.”

“There are no sources saying that the past can be changed,” says Enjolras, stepping out from behind the screen. Grantaire definitely needs to adjust the fit of the pants, which means he is going to need several glasses of wine later. For now, though, he's caught by the way Enjolras is frowning like Grantaire surprised him somehow. “Any experiments have been inconclusive.”

“But we have no way of knowing if the past and all our memories of it change once an event itself changes,” Grantaire points out, as many theorists and drunk students and science fiction fans have before him. Everyone who works in the field has had a hundred versions of this conversation, but few of them feel so urgent. “Even the traveler might not remember. If they succeeded, if they failed … if history changed, they might not remember.”

“Or they might. But it doesn't matter if I don't remember. I just need to do it.” Enjolras steps out from behind the screen, pale except for the pink in his cheeks. The clothes fit well, since Grantaire has his measurements fairly well down at this point, but he will have to tailor the pants a little more. “You're the only one who's asked me about it outright.”

“But not the only one who's guessed,” says Grantaire. He'd love to say that he sees more of Enjolras than the rest of them do, and maybe make a flowery and lascivious metaphor about seeing more of him in more than one way, but he knows that he and Courfeyrac and Combeferre have fallen into a close friendship of the kind that makes them seem like mind-readers where they're all concerned. They probably know what he's trying to change without asking. “What are you doing, then?”

“Saving a life.” Enjolras says it easily, like it's not even more of a taboo than taking one in the past. Taking a life has predictable repercussions: people who won't exist, and the ripples from their losses, a network of changes. Saving a life, if it sticks, changes things in ways no one can predict. Not that they'll know what's changed, if prevailing theories are true. “I've come to know one of the revolutionaries in a small group, and he's going to die senselessly, and never get to see the fruits of his labors—the good or the bad. He deserves better than that.”

Most people in the past do deserve better. Especially the ones that die young. Grantaire is very glad that he's a tailor and not a traveler, so he can't get attached to anyone. “Are you in love with him?” he asks instead of saying so, honestly curious.

Enjolras frowns at him, and Grantaire is sure he's about to be scolded for being nosy before all the tension finally goes out of Enjolras's shoulders. “No. But he's meant a lot to me since my first trip, and I think history will be better if he lives.”

Grantaire forces himself into moving, picking up his pins so he can take care of the fit of the pants and maybe vent some of his worries by accidentally-on-purpose stabbing Enjolras with a few of them. “Well, it's not really history while you're living it.”

For someone who doesn't seem to like him very much, Enjolras sure _looks_ at him a lot. Possibly because Grantaire keeps pissing him off. “It certainly doesn't feel that way, when you're there,” he finally says.

There's really no answer to that. Grantaire goes to work. That, at least, he knows how to do.

*

Enjolras leaves without much fuss and fanfare, but everyone spends the days before and after his departure in a state of quiet nervousness that has Grantaire's skin itching. He's the one who breaks out the wine in the break room in the middle of the afternoon a few hours after the departure, but even Combeferre and Feuilly, the ones who demur most frequently, join in.

“He asked about you before he left,” Courfeyrac says a few drinks in, brow knit like he's not sure if he's being kind or cruel to say it. “If you ever travel. Said you had an interesting conversation.”

“Did you answer him?” Grantaire asks. He's tempted to take another swig of wine, but Joly is going to start frowning at him soon.

“I told him that he should probably ask you, and he said he would when he gets back.” Courfeyrac reaches out to squeeze Grantaire's shoulder. “He'll be fine. He's smart, he's well-informed, and he knows what his job is and that part of the description is getting out safe.”

“Do you know what he's there to do? Really, I mean?”

Courfeyrac steals Grantaire's bottle of wine to take a drink of his own. Over in another corner, Bahorel and Combeferre are having what seems to be an argument about alternate realities created by changes to the past, an uncomfortable echo, while Marius and Jehan talk about Jehan's new research interests during the Crusades. Grantaire lets the conversations, comforting in their familiarity, wash over him while Courfeyrac considers his answer. “I have my guesses. Did he actually tell you?”

“Not specifics, but yeah.” Grantaire sighs. “But I guess if he succeeds, we'll never have had that conversation. That doesn't really work either, though, does it?”

“I think about the history, not the scientific theory. Either something will change or nothing will. We'll just have to see which.” Courfeyrac smiles at him, tentative, like he's testing out whether Grantaire wants to wallow or get cheered up. “He thinks he can do it. In my experience, Enjolras can do anything he wants to do.”

“You know, I could almost believe you.”

Courfeyrac toasts him and takes another drink before passing the bottle back. Cosette is eyeing them, and will probably be over in moments to gently wrest the bottle out of Grantaire's hand, but he has time for a few more swigs. “Don't believe me. Believe in him.”

*

Life goes back to normal while Enjolras is gone, because it has to. There are other travelers to send out and to welcome back. Éponine returns from six months with the Picts, who she no doubt conquered in short order, and asks him about Enjolras in a way that makes him think someone primed her with a bit too much information, Jehan and Joly and Bossuet all leave on assignments, and Combeferre starts making plans about a trip where he might run across some of his favorite philosophers and gives Grantaire headaches about the cuts of coats.

Nobody mentions Enjolras except as part of routine business in a way that makes Grantaire suspect there's a conspiracy.

“Why is everybody walking on eggshells around me and not around the man's actual friends?” he complains to Cosette when she tactfully avoids a direct question about the progress on some citations she's helping Enjolras with for when he gets back.

Cosette grabs his hand between hers and meets his eyes very earnestly. “Of course you're his friend.”

“Not the relevant part of that question!” Even if he very much doubts that Enjolras would agree with Cosette. Or maybe he would. He really doesn't know Enjolras well enough to know. “If I ask, you can safely answer a dry academic question, I'd say.”

“I know. I really do.” She takes her hands back, though he thinks it's more about giving him space than anything else. “I know you'd laugh it off if anyone said that whatever you're feeling for him seems to be more sincere than usual, but it is, right?”

“Why would it be? I barely know him.”

“I'm not saying you're in love with him. I'm just saying that he matters, and none of us want to see you hurt. So we're going out of our way not to hurt you.” She offers him a tentative smile. “And we're trying not to jinx him, too. This is the closest we've ever been to a deadline in this organization.”

Grantaire does his best to scoff, and gets at least halfway to succeeding judging from her fond exasperation. “Come on, it's Enjolras. He's the most efficient traveler we've got. He's probably finished with everything and twiddling his thumbs wondering when the internet is going to be invented so he can check his e-mail.”

Cosette smiles at him in a way that makes him think he just proved her point for her, and he immediately decides to never think about what that point is.

*

Enjolras misses his scheduled return.

Of course he does. Grantaire could almost laugh about it, if he could get a full lung of air to do it. Instead, he's standing frozen in the gate room with everyone else, staring at the open gate and waiting. A lot of them were loitering around instead of in the research rooms or their other stations already, but as the hour has come and passed for Enjolras to arrive, more and more of them have drifted in. Standard policy is to keep the gate open an hour. It's been an hour and a half, and there's no sign of Enjolras.

“He knows procedure,” Feuilly says from where he's sitting at the controls, hands as steady on them as ever, keeping the gate in position until it's impossible. “If he can't make today's gate, he knows procedure is to open at the same time every day until he's returned.”

“He does know,” says Combeferre, pale, jaw tight. “Shut it down. We're going to lose position, at this point if he tried to walk through it might be dangerous.”

The room lets out a collective breath, and Grantaire ducks before anyone can start talking about it. People miss deadlines all the time. It's rarely a cause for worry, except that one time Bossuet got arrested due to a hilarious-in-retrospect case of mistaken identity that might have caused an urban legend, and that time Bahorel had bitten off more of a fight than he could chew and came back just in time to get carted to a hospital, two days late from his meeting.

They haven't had to stage a retrieval yet, but they know the procedure for that too.

Grantaire goes back to his workshop, where he feels useful, and starts pulling garments off his racks. Something for Bahorel, their historical combat expert, who can fight anyone out of anywhere with the right preparation. Something for Courfeyrac, unnervingly close to a deadline of his own but with intimate knowledge of the laws and places of the period that they could need.

He's doing a quick and shamefully bad refit on a waistcoat to Marius's measurements in case they want someone who can pass for someone in the upper class when Éponine comes in.

“Are you going?” she asks, looking at the pile he's putting together.

“Not a good idea. Did they say when they're planning to send a team in?”

“Could be a good idea. But I get it.” She frowns at the waistcoat in his hands. “Team's going to be ready to go if he misses the fourth check-in, that gives three days to get him back. A little tight, but they can do it.”

“Bahorel, Courfeyrac, and Marius, right?”

“Probably.” She sits down in his extra chair, picking up the clothes he's picked out and starting to sort through them. “You could go instead of Courfeyrac, though. No looming deadline for you, at least. You know the period.”

“If he asks me, but I'm not a traveler. I'm a tailor. So right now my job is making sure the team is outfitted.”

She picks up a needle and the shirt that Bahorel will be wearing. “This needs letting out in the sleeves. I'll get started for you.”

*

Courfeyrac talks to him when Enjolras misses his third chance at a check-in. “You're the better option. I'm six months out from deadline at that point, and we have no idea what the hell he got himself into. No messages sent the long way, no messages delivered to the drop point, nothing.”

“If it takes six months to solve, you definitely don't want me there. Long-term? A sure disaster.”

“I'm not expecting it to be that long, but I'd feel safer, frankly. It's not ideal, but nothing is ideal right now. If he doesn't check in tomorrow, the team is going through. You could stay, but all trips are being put off until Enjolras is back, so your usual backlog is less urgent than usual, and if I stay, I can call around to other agencies to see if anyone else can make a quick trip to the era to help.”

Grantaire sighs. “It's been a really long time since I traveled.”

“I know. And I wouldn't ask, but it's Enjolras.” And he probably knows that it's crueler to ask, with Enjolras involved and Grantaire's stupid crush on him, but it's a measure of how much he wants him back, too. “Deadline missions are voluntary, and this isn't what you're on payroll for, but I do think you'll be helpful.”

In the face of that, it's hard to wave it off or make a joke like he usually would. Jokes are for times when Enjolras isn't stuck somewhere that in just a few days is going to erase him. “I'll see what I've got on the racks,” he says, knowing that what he had put aside for Courfeyrac will fit him just fine with a few adjustments.

“Let me know any time before the window opens tomorrow. I'll step aside.”

Grantaire sends him off with a few more doubtful words, but it's not fifteen minutes before he pulls Courfeyrac's clothes out of the stack and starts the alterations.

*

Enjolras doesn't come through. Bahorel, Marius, and Grantaire are the only ones in the room with Feuilly while he operates the controls. Courfeyrac was there at the start, but he saw Grantaire in the clothes and after twenty minutes, he left, claiming other business. Grantaire can't blame the him or anyone for wanting to be out of the way. He'd love to back off and pretend that it's not happening, but apparently he's convinced himself that it's a good idea to go through a gate for the first time in years on a rescue mission with no intelligence at all.

“If I,” Grantaire starts, but his bravado leaves him after those two words. He's not in danger. Enjolras is. It's not a time for dramatic statements. It's time to get him back. Feuilly, watching him patient and quiet, seems to agree.

Bahorel is technically in charge of the force, as the one most likely to be able to get them out of a bad situation if they get into one. “Come on, R, let's go.”

“Check in this time tomorrow,” Feuilly reminds them. “Whether you have him or not.”

Bahorel goes first, in case they're walking into trouble. Grantaire wants to dawdle, give himself some kind of comfort like maybe he won't go after all, but Marius of all people shows some uncharacteristic observational skills and gestures him through, mouth a flat, sympathetic line.

“See you there,” says Grantaire, and steps through the gate and into the past.

*

Every time smells different. Grantaire hasn't been to many times, but he knows they're as distinct as places.

Paris in the 1790s smells dazzlingly familiar, a feeling almost like homesickness and almost like panic, and he stands there inhaling until he realizes Bahorel and Marius are both waiting for him. “Where do we start?” Bahorel asks, like they weren't all briefed on likely locations, even if Combeferre and Courfeyrac talked around Enjolras's true purpose.

“Where the revolution is, of course,” Grantaire says, but that joke falls flat, too. All of them seem to, where Enjolras is concerned. “There are a few places to try. Let's start.”

Revolutionaries don't easily trust three strangers asking for another near-stranger by name. Bahorel charms, and Marius worries, and Grantaire rambles, and between the three of them, they find their way from one place to another, claiming Marius's cousin has come to town and not written them a letter since, that they worry he's hurt or sick.

At the third place, they strike luck. A young man is listening to them go through their now-familiar spiel of tragedy and worry, and when everyone else turns them away with suspicious looks, he follows them to a hallway. “You swear you mean Enjolras no harm?”

Grantaire sizes him up again. He looks nothing like Enjolras, but he has something of his inescapable charisma, the same way of making the world go still around him. “He saved your life, didn't he?” he asks, because of course Enjolras managed it. “Now you have to save his, and tell us where he is.”

Marius clears his throat, with Grantaire so close to breaking a hundred rules, but the revolutionary—Grantaire doesn't have his name and doesn't want it, doesn't want to know if he's going to die in an entirely different way in two weeks and break Enjolras's heart since he's not allowed within five years of this date once he's home—narrows his eyes. “He said he had to meet some friends, that it was urgent, but we thought it was the fever. How did you know what he did for me?”

“Call it a guess. You seem like a man who might owe him a debt.” Grantaire swallows. “Fever?”

“He was wounded, helping me. The doctors have seen him, but he's ill.”

“We can take him somewhere he'll get better,” Marius promises. “You probably won't see him again, but he'll be safe and healthy.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Just take us to him, see how he reacts,” says Bahorel. “If he doesn't know us, you can send us away and you'll never hear from your enemies, I promise.”

After a few moments, the revolutionary nods. “I'll take you to him. If he doesn't know you, you won't get as far as the police.”

They'll just have to hope that Enjolras isn't too far gone with fever to recognize them, then, but Grantaire doesn't protest. Between he and Bahorel, they'll be able to fight a few people off, and if Marius can get his hands on a gun, he's got good aim. And besides, Enjolras is determined enough to change history. He's determined enough to recognize them even if he's delirious.

*

Enjolras is tucked away in a busy corner of Paris, in what looks like student lodgings, perhaps the revolutionary's own, from how familiar he seems with a neighbor when he walks them by.

He escorts them up and takes them through a door to a rickety attic, oddly shaped and musty and dark. There's a small bed in one corner, and on it is Enjolras, eyes closed even though they weren't quiet about coming in.

“Enjolras,” says the revolutionary, with the kind of fondness and respect that Enjolras seems to inspire in everyone who meets him.

Enjolras rolls over, groaning as he does it, and freezes when he sees them in the doorway. He's pale and red-cheeked and his leg is a propped-up and splinted mess of bandages on top of the blankets, since it's too hot to be underneath them. “You came,” he says, voice strained. “How late am I?”

“A few days,” says Bahorel. “We need to get you home. Can you move?”

“Not easily. Broken leg. Infection.”

“Between the three of us we can carry you,” Marius promises, already stepping forward. He's the one of the three of them with the most first aid training.

Bahorel and Grantaire trail after him, and the revolutionary stays in the doorway, like he's making sure they're really not going to betray Enjolras to whoever he pissed off saving his life. Enjolras smiles, rolls his eyes a little when Marius starts fussing, and meets Grantaire's eyes. “You I didn't expect to see, I admit.”

“Courfeyrac had some business to take care of and asked if I'd be willing to volunteer since I know the area.” Grantaire shrugs. “I said yes, obviously.”

Enjolras may be feverish, but he's clear-eyed enough to give Grantaire a suspicious look, and suspicious enough that Grantaire suspects that some of his history may have been shared without his permission. Not that he minds. It's easier than explaining it to anyone new. It's just humiliating imagining the circumstances where it might have come up with Enjolras. All he says, though, is “Obviously,” an echo and a dubious one.

“I'm glad your friends came,” says the revolutionary. “I'd feared they wouldn't, and you seemed distressed.”

Because he's three days away from being erased from existence, when his wide-eyed college self comes through on an early trip, all unknowing that he's dooming his own future. Grantaire can't think about that now, because they're going to make it.

“Everything will be okay now,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire even believes it.

*

Getting Enjolras back to the gate next day is grueling. They all stay the night in that musty attic, while the revolutionary bunks elsewhere, and Grantaire cooks while Marius takes out smuggled medical supplies and does what little he can for Enjolras and Bahorel goes to a shop next door and comes back with all the local gossip about what Enjolras has been up to and grins and threatens to buy him a drink when they're back in civilization for so flagrantly flying in the face of all known guidelines to traveling.

The next day, they have to hire a cart to push Enjolras across the city to their destination, and Enjolras insists on saying his goodbyes to the men he won't see again before he goes, including the revolutionary he came to save, who seems to know a little more about what Enjolras was doing there than he should. Maybe Enjolras was indiscreet, or maybe he babbled at the height of his fever. Grantaire isn't going to ask, or mention his suspicions to any authorities in the future, and he doubts Bahorel or Marius will either.

Marius volunteers to check on the gate when the time comes and make sure that everything is in order, as well as warning them to call for medical attention for Enjolras as soon as possible. Bahorel, after a look at Grantaire, disappears as soon as Marius does, no doubt planning to appear again at exactly the right moment, and leaves Grantaire and Enjolras waiting in an out-of-the-way corner to go home.

“I want to go out to dinner when we're home,” Enjolras says abruptly.

Grantaire blinks at him. “You'll be under a doctor's tender care, but I'm sure someone will order you takeout. Actually, everyone's going to be so glad you're alive that you can probably dine out on it for weeks.”

“With you,” Enjolras elaborates, like that makes any sense at all. “On a date.”

“What? Why?” Grantaire winces. “Sorry, pretend I said something classier than that. Just … no, yeah, the questions stand. I'm not fishing for compliments, just very sincerely confused, and anyone I know will tell you that I am very rarely sincerely anything.”

Enjolras raises an eyebrow, and he's tired, face drawn with pain even despite the painkillers Marius has forced on him, but he still manages to look piercing and a little impatient. “I don't think that's true. And I like you. So I made a bargain with myself.”

Grantaire knows that kind of bargain well, the _if I survive this, I'll be better, I'll do something I've been putting off, I'll do something brave_ kind. He just never has the courage to follow through on his and can't imagine a world where Enjolras would use him as a reward in that kind of bargain. “You don't seem to like me,” he points out. “You mostly seem annoyed.”

“I am, sometimes. And other times, I like to talk to you. And watch you work. I'd like to talk to you more.” Enjolras's mouth quirks. He's exhausted and pained, but there's some humor in his expression, and something like anxiety too. Grantaire can't think of a painter who could have captured the expression, but dozens who would have tried. “I'm not proposing. Just asking for dinner, one time, once I've recovered. If you think you can't stand all the arguing after that, I won't mind.”

“What the hell,” says Grantaire, which might be the least gracious acceptance of an invitation in history. He's never claimed good manners. “You changed history. Anything could work out, after that.”

Marius chooses that moment to reappear, Bahorel on his heels, and then it's time to go home. Grantaire helps Enjolras out of the cart, gets one of his arms around his shoulders while Bahorel bends to take his other side, and the three of them stagger through the door to the future together, bringing Marius along in their wake.

Everyone who works at the agency and isn't on a job is there, faces full of relief and joy, Courfeyrac standing at the front of them with a special smile for Grantaire even as someone rushes forward to get Enjolras onto a cot where medical staff can look after him. “Welcome home,” he says, and Grantaire nods.

*

“I am kicking you out of my workshop,” Grantaire threatens several weeks later.

Enjolras, sitting with his foot propped up on a hatbox, gives him a slight curve of a smile that Grantaire has learned to interpret as a mischievous grin. “Combeferre didn't kick me out of his office when I mentioned it to him, so I don't see why you would.”

“Combeferre has apparently forgotten that you're a reckless workaholic who gets obsessed with time periods and puts himself in danger. And I note that you don't mention Courfeyrac.”

“I have months worth of background research to do, not to mention a paper to finish based on my last experiences. You don't even need to think about wardrobe yet.”

As though Enjolras won't rush, to get away on his next trip sooner. At least Grantaire knows that Courfeyrac is on his side. “And you aren't going to write a paper on your actual proof that you changed the past, and that only the people who know you changed it know what the original past is? Physicists and historians alike will weep.”

Enjolras smiles again, and Grantaire knows there's a list of things in his head that he wants to change, wants to fix. Eventually he's going to rewrite all of history through sheer force of will. It's a terrifying thought, but he rather likes it. “I think I plan to keep that to myself for a while.”

“So where to next, if you're already making plans? Another revolution to get yourself wrapped up in?”

Enjolras starts talking, laying out his next plans, and Grantaire settles in to listen, and needle him about his very obvious ulterior motives, and remind him of all the good things the future holds.

Mid-way through, Enjolras reaches out and grabs his hand, preventing him from continuing a seam on Jehan's latest coat, so it seems like that's working, anyway. Grantaire smiles and allows himself to take a break.


End file.
